I'M BACK KLICKNETTARS........AGAIN! But who know who else is back? It's not.....my Mom, it's.......THE ACTORS! That's right, SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers came to a tentative deal this past Wednesday, ending the SAG-AFTRA Strike at 12:01AM PT on Thursday. The good news had only just begun, because yesterday on Friday the SAG-AFTRA National Board voted 86% in favor of approving this new three-year contract. Now the deal must be ratified by eligible members of the Actors' Union and that will begin this Tuesday, November 14th. Truth be told, this will last until December 5, so it's take three weeks to put all of this actors' strike behind. As for where the Wkly Hit List and KlicKNet is at, I must inform you of a few things. 1. We're currently producing a new episode of FakeTV Box which will be Tuck Tomeson's last gig as fill-in host of the year, 2. The next episode we make be feature the return of ME, the real Host of FTB for the first time since July (excluding the KlicKNet trailer I did in September). 3. I'm gonna be off again next Saturday on the 18th, for I have another outside film project that I'm gonna be a part of. But first, we have some business to attend to right now.
Our Inside Scoop this week recaps the last two episodes of Marvel Studios' Loki Season 2, streaming now on Disney+. Before I do, I wanna address the mixed opinions that have surrounded the Marvel Cinematic Universe lately, people have said the current state of the franchise is mess and Marvel Studios is failing to make hit blockbusters within The Multiverse Saga as Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, and Secret Invasion didn't live up to the hype as we thought they would. The Marvels which is in theaters now is even lucky to have a decent fresh score by critics on Rotten Tomatoes, however the box office might proved to be the deciding factor. There have also been reports that Captain America: Brave New World — after being previously scheduled for May 3, 2024, and July 26, 2024 — is being pushed to February 14, 2025 because it's undergoing extensive reshoots after cutting a handful of major scenes from the film. Insiders say an early test screening of Captain America: Brave New World “did not do great” so it's gonna take six months at least for reshoots to have happen; furthermore Deadpool 3 will be only MCU film to released next year and we'll all see on July 24, 2025, and The Thunderbolts and Blade have been pushed to 2025 also.
On the bright side, Loki has proven that the MCU is not dead yet, and as long time fan of this franchise, I have nothing negative to say about and I would never want it dead. It's true that Marvel Studios needs to get their act together if they wanna provide the best storytelling and continue The Multiverse Saga with Avengers: Secret Wars coming in four years, or maybe longer. With all of that being said, let's do the recap. WARNING: This piece may contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen Episodes 5 and 6 of Loki Season 2 yet, then stop reading now. If you have seen them, then it's okay to read. If you would like to continue at your risk, be my guest.
In Episode 5, when we last left Loki, he was in the midst of meltdown of the Temporal Loom, but as a god he survived while everyone else vanishes and the TVA headquarters spaghettifies. Suddenly, Loki begins to time-slip again, but this time, he isn't just time slipping within the TVA. He time-slips away and next appears in 1962 in a branched timeline in San Francisco, California. Here, he finds Casey — except it's not Casey, his name is Frank, a career criminal currently trying to escape Alcatraz with his fellow prisoners. Throughout the episode, Loki is pulled through time, but where he ends up is interesting because he appears at the location of each of his friends. He sees B-15, who's a doctor named Dr. Willis in 2012 New York. Then he sees O.B. who is an author/scientist named A.D. Doug in 1994 Pasadena. And last but not least, he finds Mobius, now named Don — living the dream on his jet ski, or so we think. We find out that he works at a jet ski shop in 2022 Cleveland.
Wanting to time slip to before the explosion, Loki enlists Doug's help. With Loki unable to control his time slipping, Doug proposes Loki gather everyone present at the explosion back together, so that their collective temporal aura can send them back to the right time and place. So Loki does, but first he gives Doug the TVA guidebook so Doug can build a TemPad, but before Loki can say anything else, he time slips to Cleveland. Loki approaches Mobius, who has no idea who he is and is initially apprehensive of him until O.B. appears through a time door from his homemade TemPad. Side Note: Mobius, in this universe, is a single dad to two sons and has a seemingly comfortable life selling jet skis. Loki convinces him that he should help because all of existence is in danger, including the lives of his children. After some persuading, Mobius agrees to go with them, and Loki and O.B. assemble the rest of the team before going to collect Sylvie.
Returning back to the McDonald's in 1982 Oklahoma, Loki approaches Sylvie, ready to give her his speech about the TVA — but unlike the other variants, Sylvie remembers him and has all of her memories intact. Rather than go with him back to the group, Sylvie refuses to help and admits to be selfish; she wants nothing more to do with the TVA and would rather live a life alone. Sylvie then gets Loki to admit his true motivation: he wants his friends back at the TVA and fears being alone. Loki returns to Doug and the gang uncertain of how to proceed, just then, everything in Sylvie's timeline spaghettifies, she goes to help Loki. But soon Doug's workshop also spaghettifies, as do Frank, Doug, Don, Willis, and Sylvie. Loki is finally able to control his time slipping by focusing on a person. Declaring that he can "rewrite the story", Loki time slips to before the explosion by focusing on Ouroboros.
We come to the Sixth and Final Episode where Loki manages to jump back to the point before Victor Timely walks onto the platform and gets spaghettified and before . There, Loki asks O.B. on how they could have prevented it and O.B. says that they took too long, they needed more time. So, Loki uses his new time-slipping powers to jump back in time, going further and further to try and get Victor safely out onto the platform. Despite his attempts and eventually succeeding into getting the multiplier onto the machine in order to expand the Temporal Loom, the Loom was always destined to fail at accommodating the infinite branches. The problem is believed to lie at the beginning of this whole fiasco. If He Who Remains was never killed, the timelines would never branch, the Temporal Loom would stay in place, and no spaghettification — God I can't stop typing about spaghetti! Moving on, Loki jumps farther back into history, going all the way back to the end of Season 1, when he and Sylvie arrive at the Citadel at the End of Time. He does his best to try and convince Sylvie to stop, to save He Who Remains, but after more attempts, he realizes that Sylvie will never stop.
Here's where it gets scary courtesy of He Who Remains. He stops time with his TemPad and reveals that he's known about Loki's time slipping all along before we ever did. It's yet another seed that he planted in Loki after seeing that Sylvie would come to kill him. This has all been a part of the plan for He Who Remains; shocking isn't it?! He Who Remains then tells Loki that the Temporal Loom is a fail-safe; overloading it protects the Sacred Timeline by deleting the branches along with the TVA. Even with the Loom gone, the Multiversal War will still occur, the Kang Variants will come to conqueror, and there's no way to stop them. He Who Remains suggests to Loki that he kills Sylvie to save the Loom, which Loki rejects. After consulting Mobius and Sylvie at different moments in time, Loki comes back to the moment before the explosion, replaces Timely in approaching the Loom, and what happens next will without a doubt be a defining moment in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Since the temporal radiation doesn't affect him, he takes each step toward the Loom, his clothes disappear; replacing them are a cape and his signature horns. Using his magic, Loki destroys the Loom, then magically revives the dying timelines and rearranges them into a tree-like structure (the Yggdrasil), and at this point, we realized that he has committed himself to overseeing the branches alone at the End of Time, not to mention that he finally has a throne to sit in on, and made of gold no less. When I watched this with the rest of the KlicKNet team, our jaws completely dropped to the floor, 'cause how Marvel Studios could ever pull anything like that off beyond us. The VFX team of Loki deserve a Million Dollar paycheck for such hard work and visual effects.
Towards the end of the episode, we see the TVA accepting the growing branches and now tracking He Who Remains' variants, with Mobius reporting one variant being stopped at Earth-616's "adjacent realm," obviously referring to Quantumania. B-15 becomes one of the TVA's leaders, Ouroboros reactivates a now-friendly Miss Minutes and writes a new TVA Handbook with Timely as co-author. In one timeline, Timely does not receive the TVA Handbook in 1863, and Renslayer awakens in the Void and sees Alioth. Finally, Mobius retires from the TVA as he meets up with Sylvie to observe Don and his children on the Sacred Timeline. After Sylvie departs, Mobius stands and waits as Loki watches over him.
After further analysis, I would say that this is one of the most well-written stories the MCU has ever done and it was all centered on the God of Mischief, slowly but surely, becoming God of Stories. I hoped you KlicKNettars enjoyed reading these recaps and reviews, and I'll see back on the blog November 25th.
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